Gerald D. Feldman

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Gerald Donald Feldman (born April 24, 1937 in New York City , † October 31, 2007 in Berkeley ) was an American historian . His focus was the German economic history of the 20th century. He was important as a writer as well as a coordinator of larger scientific projects.

Life

Feldman came from a Jewish family who had emigrated from Eastern Europe to the USA before the First World War . Feldman himself considered himself a Jewish American throughout his life, even if he had not practiced the religion and its dietary rules.

With the help of a scholarship , he began his studies at Columbia College in New York and later went to Harvard University . After a research stay in Germany, Feldman received his doctorate in 1964. He has been teaching at the University of California, Berkeley since 1963 . After all, there he held a full professorship. He later took on the Jane K. Sather Endowed Professorship . Until his retirement in 2007 he taught at Berkeley.

The teaching activity was interrupted by numerous research stays and visiting professorships in Germany and Austria.

For his work he received, among other things, the Great Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany . Feldman had been a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences since 2004 . His role in the "Abraham Affair" was seen as controversial. Feldman initially supported the young historian David Abraham and then criticized his dissertation on the fall of the Weimar Republic. This criticism has been perceived by a number of historians as malicious and one-sided. Abraham left history and became a law professor in the United States.

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Research on economic and social history

His dissertation was devoted to the network of relationships between the army, industry and the labor movement in the German Empire during the First World War. This pioneering work was a politically oriented economic and social history of Germany at that time.

The work was central to the initial research into German social and economic history during the First World War and the post-war years. Feldman himself has made a significant contribution to the further development of research. At the important conference “Industrial System and Political Development in the Weimar Republic ” in 1973 in Bochum , he was rapporteur for the field of social policy and social conflicts. He himself made an important contribution to research into demobilization .

In 1977 Feldman published his second major monograph on the German coal and steel industry during the inflation between 1916 and 1923.

Feldman used the method of critical empiricism . A dense description and good source work were important to him . On this basis, he tried to verify or refute theories or concepts. Feldman succeeded many times in opening up new sources, for example in the archives of large companies .

Together with Otto Büsch, he was the driving force behind the 1976 conference on “Historical Processes of German Inflation 1914–1924”. He was the main factor behind the long-term research program for studying inflation. Feldman was a member of the project's steering committee. Together with the other members of the committee, Feldman published the results of inflation research in various anthologies, for example, in 1984 together with William J. Bouwsma, the bilingual volume The Experience of Inflation: International and Comparative Studies / The experience of inflation in an international context and comparison .

The book “The great Disorder” was published in 1993 as a quintessence, so to speak. This 1000-page attempt was an attempt to write a comprehensive political, social and economic history of the German inflation period.

Together with Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich , Gerhard A. Ritter and Peter-Christian Witt, Feldman was editor of the articles on inflation and reconstruction in Germany and Europe 1914–1924 in the 1980s .

Entrepreneur and company history

Feldman later published a biography of Hugo Stinnes , one of the main economic players during inflation. The book represented a certain change in Feldman's work. In place of the general economic, social and political history, the history of entrepreneurs and companies has now increasingly emerged. Feldman was instrumental in developing a new form of corporate history. So far, larger works have mostly been created as commemorative publications by companies, often written by non-historians and based on selectively made available sources. Not infrequently, the work left out controversial phases.

When Feldman presented the idea of ​​a Deutsche Bank story to the management bodies of the company from 1989 onwards , he insisted on unrestricted access to sources and complete independence of the authors. Feldman himself took on the history of the bank from 1914 to 1933. Feldman was also the coordinator of the project. With regard to National Socialism , it became clear that the group had not sought closer ties to the NSDAP before 1932, but the bank did not contribute to the defense of the republic either.

Against the background of press reports about the involvement of the Allianz group in the crimes of National Socialism , the company decided to have the story examined by an independent historian, who was guaranteed access to all sources. The task was taken over by Feldman. Since there was no actual company archive, Feldman opened up replacement records in the archives. One of the results was that the leadership of the Alliance had maintained close relationships with some leading National Socialists, particularly Hermann Göring, even before 1933 . Its general director Kurt Schmitt was a staunch National Socialist and was Minister of Economics for a short time after 1933. In the further course of the Third Reich , the company profited in various ways from the crimes of the regime.

Feldman's work on Austrian banks during the Nazi era also belongs in this context. This had emerged from a report by an independent commission of historians in connection with a class action lawsuit by former forced laborers. Feldman showed that the Austrian banks he examined were by no means just victims of the regime, but represented their own interests and also got involved in the National Socialist regime of their own accord.

Fonts

author

  • with Heidrun Bombach: Industry and Inflation. Studies and documents on the politics of German entrepreneurs 1916–1923. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-455-09209-8 .
  • Bavaria and Saxony in the hyperinflation 1922/23 (= writings of the historical college . Lectures . Vol. 6), Munich 1984 ( digitized ).
  • Army, industry and workers in Germany 1914 to 1918. Dietz, Bonn a. a. 1985, ISBN 3-8012-0110-4 . Revised and translated version of the English first edition Army, Industry and Labor in Germany, 1914–1918. 1966.
  • The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation 1914–1924. Oxford Publishing, New York 1993, ISBN 0-19-503791-X .
  • Hugo Stinnes - biography of an industrialist, 1870–1924. Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 978-3-406-43582-9 .
  • Allianz and the German Insurance Industry 1933–1945. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 978-3-406-48255-7 .
  • Austrian banks and savings banks during National Socialism and in the post-war period. Volume 1: Creditverein - Bankanstalt. Volume 2: Regional banks, Länderbank and Zentralsparkasse. Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-55158-1 .

editor

  • From World War to Great Depression. Studies on German economic and social history 1914–1932. (= Critical Studies in History . Vol. 60). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1984, ISBN 978-3-525-35719-4 .
  • The aftermath of inflation on German history 1924–1933 (= Writings of the Historisches Kolleg. Colloquia . Vol. 6), Oldenbourg, Munich 1985, ISBN 978-3-486-52221-1 ( digitized version ).
  • with Manfred Rasch: August Thyssen and Hugo Stinnes - an exchange of letters 1898–1922. Editor Vera Schmidt. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-49637-7 .
  • with Wolfgang Seibel: Networks of Nazi persecution - bureaucracy, business, and the organization of the Holocaust. Berghahn, Oxford New York, NY 2005, ISBN 1-571-81177-X (= Studies on War and Genocide. Volume 6).

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Feldman, Gerald D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Feldman, Gerald Donald (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 2007
Place of death Berkeley